It was announced on the SVK Development mailing list that there is a Visual Guide to SVK being developed.
The current version of the document is version 0.2.
I have yet to be able to download it (the connection is timing out), however, I thought I’d put the link up here so that I (and others) can find it easily.
Updates will be posted on the Visual Guide page of the SVK Wiki.
Photo by rbieber
Jake Like Flash Memory!
These Jake pictures are cracking me up. I can’t resist posting them when the kids take them.
See the whole collection of Jakes often imitated, never duplicated “thumbs up” pose.
We spent yesterday hanging out in Beloit, WI at their Riverfest. The main reason we were there was to see AlterBridge and Collective Soul, but rather than go down at the end of the day we decided to make a day of it.
The festival is not something you can “make a day of”.
We spent a lot of time walking around, but not much time doing anything. Carnival games is not something we’re really interested in, so a lot of time was spent just sitting together and talking, or watching the kids play tag to kill time.
However, we did see some good bands. The band 529 opened on the main stage where AlterBridge and Collective Soul were to play at about 5:30. One thing we noticed immediately was that, although the ads for Riverfest that we had seen said, quite explicitly, that no cameras were allowed, everyone except us ignored the restriction. So out of everyone there, we were the only ones unable to get pictures except for a couple I tried to take with Jonnas cameraphone that wound up being worthless. So the first lesson, when they say they don’t allow cameras, they don’t really mean it apparently.
I enjoyed 529 a lot. They were a cover band, doing a lot of Nickelback, Seether, and Green Day stuff. They sounded great.
AlterBridge was incredible. Mark Tremonti is an excellent guitar player and the band really put on a good show. I found this show to be the most enjoyable of the evening. I really wish we would have ignored the stated camera rules, because we had some great seats and would have gotten some incredible pictures. The show was awesome.
Towards the end, however, we got tired of all of the people around us and decided to move way to the back of the park, so that we could listen to the music without dealing with the people. People at these kinds of shows are extremely self centered, and don’t look at the fact that they are positioning themselves in front of a group of people that have been sitting there all day to aquire their seats. I really wish people were more socially conscious sometimes.
Collective Soul was good, but we didn’t enjoy that show as much as the AlterBridge one. They’re a great band, but for some reason we weren’t that into it. We stayed for most of it, but wound up leaving to beat the mad rush out of the grounds.
So to wrap up and present a summary:
I’ve created an iMix on iTunes with what I think are the Essential Vai songs for people who haven’t been exposed to Vai’s music. Click the link above to download it. The cost winds up being about $12.87 for 13 songs, and gives you pretty much what I think is the essential collection from almost all of his albums to introduce yourself to Steve Vai.
Now I just need to figure out how to sneak all of these into Kelsi’s iPod …
Tom the Architect pointed me over to this site which demonstrates and provides a framework for developing rich components for client side java script development. One component, TrimQuery, even implements the SQL language over in-memory arrays, for easy querying of data.
This is an interesting set of components that help to implement an new (at least to me) class of applications currently known as “SPADE” applications (Single Page Application and Development Environments).
What will they think of next?
Developer Outsources Job, says employer “thinks he’s telecommuting”. Found on kottke.org.
Photo by rbieber
Jake and Kelsi "strike the pose" with his new PSP he bought with "birthday money" — a currency that children seem to trade for products and services these days.
Yesterday was Jakes 15th birthday. For his big day he received “birthday money” to which he added to “other money” to purchase a Sony PSP.
We also went to see Night Ranger at McHenry Fiesta Days. Jonna and I thought they were pretty good, but the kids had a lot of comments like Kelsi’s statement of the evening “there’s too little words and too much guitar”.
I enjoyed the show. They sounded great and Brad Gillis and Jeff Watson were excellent as usual. I’ve always liked Brads playing and it was cool to finally see him play in person.
Our children are definitely “post Nirvana” children though, who do not understand the value of a great guitar solo and the incredible feeling of an air guitar in hand …
Slashdot points to this article on Groklaw, which makes public a recently unnsealed email which states that the Linux Kernel is free of SCO intellectual property.
So I spent the equivalent of about 3 or 4 days loading up my iPod with music from the CD collection. I listen to that for about a week and then discover these things called ‘podcasts’. The next thing I know, I’m not shuffling music anymore, or really even listening to it that much, but I’m downloading podcasts and listening to them instead. I’m getting addicted to one show in particular, called Keith and the Girl.
I’ve always been a big fan of ‘personality’ type of radio. I’ve been a Steve Dahl fan since my Uncle introduced me to Steve and Garry back in 1980 or so. I was a big Howard Stern fan for a while. As time went on, and the commercial breaks got longer (and longer, and longer) and the FCC started renewed efforts to censor what I could listen to, I began to get disenchanted with radio as a medium.
As Stern began talking about his move to Sirius Satellite Radio, I seriously considered getting it. Then I got this iPod and found that there were actually independent, ‘real’ people doing broadcasts that I could download and listen to.
This is the kind of stuff I like. I like to listen to regular people. I like the concentrated hour of content rather than the multiple commercial breaks. Most of all, I like having full control of what I can listen to rather than someone else picking and bleeping things for me.
Keith and the Girl are Keith Malley (comedian and webmaster of shite.com) and his girlfriend Chemda. They started their podcast in March of this year. I really enjoy it.
Those with iTunes 4.9 can subscribe to the ‘Keith and the Girl‘ show and get daily downloads as you update your podcasts lists.
As I get caught up on this show, I am also going to start hitting the top 10 on Podcast Alley to see what else is out there. If you’ve got an mp3 player, and you haven’t started checking podcasts out yet, give them a shot. You might never go back to regular radio.
Bieber Labs 